On February 26th, I had the great fun of chatting with Betabrand‘s Founder and CEO, Chris Lindland, about one of my favorite topics: using humor in marketing. I even let it go without teasing that he was a minute late for the call! I met Chris last year at FunnyBizz in SF. His [...]Read Full Article →

On Feb 12, I had the pleasure of chatting with Roger Dooley, author of Brainfluence, one of my favorite marketing books of the last few years. On this podcast, we chat neuromarketing, influence and persuasion and what marketers must do differently. Follow Kathy Follow Roger Neuromarketing and Podcast Highlights Note: [...]Read Full Article →

Content Marketing Funnel I had the pleasure of chatting with one of my favorite content marketers this week, Jason Miller of LinkedIn, and author of “Welcome to the Funnel.” Follow Kathy Follow Jason Tips From the Podcast 1. Inject your personality [...]Read Full Article →

Dating is a a lot like building a business relationship. When you don’t know a person well, you don’t jump straight into trying to seal the deal. Remember the guy or girl that gives way too much information to move things ‘forward’ quickly. Whoa! Slow your roll! Or, imagine someone proposing to you after a [...]Read Full Article →

Cowbell Principle – More Cowbell is a Great Thing I had the great pleasure of chatting with the authors of The Cowbell Principle on the podcast November 20th. The book, named after the hilarious SNL Sketch with Will Ferrell, helps entrepreneurs and leaders discover and highlight their differentiation in the [...]Read Full Article →

Today, I had a blast on the podcast. I interviewed myself on one of my favorite topics: How to Speak Human in marketing. Hope you enjoy listening to it; I had fun doing it. Speak Human Listen to the Podcast! Check Out Marketing Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio [...]Read Full Article →

On October 23rd, I had a blast chatting with Jessie Cohen Shternshus of Improv Effect, about applying principles of improvisation to product design and design thinking. Product Design and Design Thinking A few highlights from our conversation: 1. At the heart of improv and product design using design thinking methods is empathy. Focus [...]Read Full Article →

In late September, Burson-Marsteller released its perception study findings on what people think of corporations. The following Slideshare infographic, for example, shows that 40% of US Millennials believe that US corporations are a source of fear, not hope. The American public overall is split on this issue. This mixed perception illustrates [...]Read Full Article →

Social Shakeup Recently, I had the fun of catching up with Robin Fray Carey, Founder of Social Media Today, about the Social Shakeup Conference in September – what’s new, what companies are doing and what they should be thinking about in terms of social media best practices. Key Points from [...]Read Full Article →

The following post is an update from a prior post from over a year ago. My update appeared in convinceandconvert.com on September 30: Why Every Organization Needs a Chief Marketing Improvisation Officer. The New CMIO: Not Information, Improvisation As a stage improviser, I love playing with the audience and [...]Read Full Article →

FunnyBizz Conference Might Just Well be a Movement I had a fun time chatting with FunnyBizz Conference Co-creator, David Nihill, on the show on Thursday, September 11. I met David at in San Francisco in June 2014 – the inaugural launch of the conference. It was small – roughly 100 people – brought together at [...]Read Full Article →

Be Indispensable to Customers: Simplify Complexity ‘You made the topic of company storytelling so simple to get. You took away all the complexity we were struggling with and gave us a much-needed, relevant, inspiring and simple framework.’ That is one of the greatest compliments I can get (or any business can get) because of how [...]Read Full Article →

On August 28th, I had the pleasure of talking to one of my fave funnymen, Facebook experts and fellow comedy improviser, Brian Carter. We talked about his upcoming co-authored book, The Cowbell Principle (I am not going to him all the credit!), Facebook, how B2B needs to be thinking about marketing, and we are not [...]Read Full Article →

A version of my original piece was published in the Convinceandconvert blog and in MarketingProfs. Lighten Up Your Marketing Humor is Human! As content marketing explodes, so too, does the volume of noise. You have about 7 seconds to grab attention. To date, there haven’t been [...]Read Full Article →

Everybody Writes I had a great chat with Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs and author of the soon-to-be-released book, Everybody Writes. One of my favorite content peeps, Ann is always fun to talk to. In this episode, we chatted about content, writing and some things brands need to do differently. And, of course, [...]Read Full Article →

The way you communicate with prospects and customers creates or destroys value. When communication is focused and simple, it can add value by challenging your prospects’ status quo, expanding their options, and helping them to see things in new ways. Yet, too often we’re guilty of complicating things and we may not even realize it. [...]Read Full Article →

Yes, you are special – just like everyone else! Actually, the truth is you *are* special…..as is everyone else. Therein lies the rub. But what makes you special in your business rarely comes down to just one thing. It can, certainly. And there are companies that have a big, single-point of differentiation. For most of [...]Read Full Article →

Content Voice Lessons from ‘Girl in a Country Song’ I am not a country music fan. Oh sure, there is the occasional song that makes me laugh, smile and sing along. I am, however, a fan of Tae and Maddie, a new blonde country duo that penned “Girl in a Country Song.” And I think [...]Read Full Article →

Compelling Marketing Content I recently had the fun honor of talking to one of my fave content marketing people, Jason Miller of LinkedIn. And while I am pretty sure he wouldn’t describe himself this way (he’s humble), he’s a master at it. He’s also a rock ‘n’ roll photographer – a pretty cool job. And [...]Read Full Article →

Content Marketing Humor Humor is an important pattern disruption technique and it can change the way prospects and customers perceive your company. Humor is human! Sprinkle in a little levity – and boom, you can flip expectations. Content Marketing Humor: Presentation Create Better Marketing Content with Humor [...]Read Full Article →

What Makes Things Funny and What Marketers Can Learn: A Chat with Peter McGraw Much like Monty Python’s ‘Search for the Holy Grail,’ Peter McGraw and his researchers at the Humor Lab in Boulder, Colorado, have set about on a ‘funny’ quest – or a quest for what’s funny. That’s a tall order. In this [...]Read Full Article →

Every buyer has a story about his or her work, what’s wrong, what’s right and why he or she does what they do. Conversely, every company has a story they tell buyers about why they should buy. Sometimes, those stories don’t match. That’s an issue. Do you know the buyer story in every situation? You [...]Read Full Article →

As a marketer and storyteller, I love that storytelling has made a huge resurgence in the last few years: in pop culture, in business culture, and in social communications. Storytelling is essential to high-functioning organizational cultures, to building community, and to creating that shared emotional narrative with employees and customers. Humans are wired for stories. [...]Read Full Article →

The Big Marketing Question Your Company Must Nail It’s a comical scene right out of one of my favorite new shows, Silicon Valley, where I grew up (of course, it was mostly cherry and apricot orchards then, but hey…). The scene: brilliant technical founders of a company that can tell you [...]Read Full Article →

Keeping Sales Human: Agile Selling in a Noisy, Busy World On May 22nd I had the pleasure of chatting with one my fave sales experts – and I don’t throw that term around liberally – Jill Konrath. Always a breath of fresh, no-nonsense Midwestern common sense on sales, Jill talked about becoming a [...]Read Full Article →

Facebook Marketing Using Humor On May 8th, I had the great and fun pleasure of chatting with author, Brian Carter. He and I were on a panel together talking about humor – a topic near and dear to both of us. Humor and depth create meaning and engagement in social media in general. In this [...]Read Full Article →

Storytelling is the original social medium and humans are wired for it. As a marketer, storyteller, and improviser, I also believe it’s one of the most important, though underutilized, skills for leading today. And it’s not just about storytelling externally; it’s about rallying your best storytellers inside the company (read: not in the C-suite!) to [...]Read Full Article →

Cut the Crap! The “Er” of Comparison Branding Harvard Business Review (HBR) had a great article last week on common mistakes start-ups make in talking about their brands. In that piece, the author explains that start-ups (and other companies) too often rely on comparing themselves to [...]Read Full Article →

My Favorite Marketing Podcasts I started my podcasts series with a tongue-in-cheek title just over 1.5 years ago. The idea was to have fun with great guests where we could discuss marketing in a human way without the talking head, self-promotional, jargon-laden nonsense. In that last 18 months, we’ve had some awesome guests give great [...]Read Full Article →

Why Most Brand Videos Suck This parody video of a generic ad created by Dissolve.com (and republished by AdWeek.com) cracks me up. Dissolve took stock footage to create the ad based on Kendra Eash’s “This Is a Generic Brand Video” originally published on McSweeney’s. Generic Brand Video How many brand videos does this remind [...]Read Full Article →

Visual Storytelling Rules I had the pleasure of talking with author, CMO and co-founder of Branderati, Ekaterina Walter, on the podcast today. We had a blast talking about why visual storytelling matters (Ekaterina is the co-author of The Power of Visual Storytelling) and what you need to know to better connect with your [...]Read Full Article →

On today’s podcast, I covered a number of ways to add fun and humor to your marketing. Being funny is great – and there is no denying it. Even fun can be a huge benefit because it circumvents your audience’s logic filter and allows your messages to get through. Tweet: When you make someone [...]Read Full Article →

Underlying every business decision is a personal need – a human need. It’s Abraham Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Needs in action. Customers don’t make purely rational, logical decisions. Although for too long, B2B marketers acted as if customers made robotic decisions based solely on rational value. We don’t check our human cards at the door when [...]Read Full Article →

Liza Donnelly’s latest book, Women on Men, is more than just fun cartoons. And, yes, the book has plenty of those, too. This book explores the conversations funny women have been having for years – about life and well, yes, men. Yes, guys, we talk about you when you’re not [...]Read Full Article →

As a marketer and comic improviser, this is a topic near and dear to my storytelling heart. I know comedy can help marketers learn to connect with audiences in a much deeper way and make us better content marketers! I didn’t learn that in business school. I recently wrote a Read Full Article →

Content Marketing Secret Sauce: Your Voice I love hot sauce. It’s my superfood crush. I’d declare it a food group if I could – and I may! It adds spice and flavor, and can turn something bland into something truly awesome. That gets me thinking about how every business has a secret sauce – [...]Read Full Article →

Power Up Your Content Marketing On a special episode of our podcast today, February 11, I had the pleasure of talking to Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs.com, about content marketing. 2014 Content Marketing Trends Content marketing isn’t new; however, it has changed a lot over the last few years. Some of the biggest [...]Read Full Article →

Marketing Human2Human – The Newest ‘Old’ Idea Sadly, ‘human’ has crossed into jargon-dom. In September 2013, I wrote about the latest CMO marketing buzzword – ‘human’ – based on Ad Age’s article. More recently, I’ve seen social media posts about human to human (Human2Human) as opposed to [...]Read Full Article →

As a marketer who came out of high-tech, I’ve always believed that marketing is at its best when technology isn’t front and center. Technology empowers people. It enables them to live better lives, to connect more fully, to take advantage of opportunities, to bring people closer together, to innovate more freely, you name it. [...]Read Full Article →

While some companies are rewriting the playbook on product and service design, too often storytelling begins after the product is finished. Some of the most important storytelling, however, happens before and while the product is being built. The savviest designers know that telling the story of your customer and their human challenges first is necessary [...]Read Full Article →

I admit it. I want to be one Tough Mudder because it represents grit, tenacity, and the best about competing in a hardcore athletic event: finding your capacity for being better. Create a Customer Movement Tough Mudder is a great example of marketing because the focus is not on the product or service. Instead, the [...]Read Full Article →

On Thursday, Jan 16th, I had a blast talking with my friend and SNCR.org colleague, John Cass, about content gardens on the podcast. What the hell is a content garden, anyway? Content Marketing Gardens A content garden is all the ways you develop content – it can be content created by a community that already [...]Read Full Article →

I had a great time chatting with my favorite marketing funnyman and fellow improviser, Tim Washer, about one of my fave marketing topics: adding humor to b2b marketing. Tim says he’ll be back at least 5 times to keep up his SNL-like co-hosting bonafides! I’m holding him to that. 2014 is THE Year for Humor [...]Read Full Article →

Business Storytelling vs. Storydoing In his recent HBR article, Ty Montague calls great companies ‘storydoing’ organizations. The premise: great companies are story doers, not just storytellers. Specifically, this means they take action on stories, and run efficiently and more profitably as a result. Montague has also written a book, True Story: [...]Read Full Article →

This is part II/II. Read Part I here. Show How Customers’ Situations “Change” Users don’t buy ‘value propositions’; they buy something bigger that helps them in their lives. The most important part of a story, therefore, is showing how the hero/protagonist of the story changes. What can [...]Read Full Article →